Natural Resources Committee on May 9th, 2024

[Debbie Scharf]

Thank you for the question.

Those capacity-building projects are quite important, because they provide an opportunity to give communities the opportunity to overcome some of the barriers that stand in the way of their participation in those deployment projects, whether it be training in the community, energy planning or feasibility studies. They are smaller scale, but they are the precursor.

We often find that after those capacity-building investments have been made, many of those then turn into deployment projects with indigenous ownership in them. It's a bit of a trajectory of providing that capacity to then enable that ownership.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you.

One project that stands out to me on the energy storage side is the Oneida battery storage facility. It is funded, I believe, through the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which has been doing a lot of important work in helping to support the work that we're doing on storage and on our clean electricity grid.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that project and also how the Infrastructure Bank helps to support these types of projects?

[Debbie Scharf]

Absolutely.

It is a 250-megawatt energy storage project. It's actually one of the largest in Ontario, and I think it's the largest that we have deployed to date, although I expect that we will probably beat that in the years to come.

It is a partnership that includes the Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation, Northland Power, NRStor and Aecon. It is a partnership between indigenous communities and other developers.

SREPs actually did put $50 million into that particular project, as well as the Canada Infrastructure Bank.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank plays a really important role in offering strategic and low-cost financing, either in projects that operate with a higher degree of risk, which makes it harder to raise private sector money, or it offers more favourable terms to the projects to make them more economical. It plays a very complementary role.

Oftentimes, programs like SREPs give grants. Then when you need that higher-risk financing, the CIB can come in and complement that. Together, it gets the projects over the finish line. That's exactly what happened with Oneida.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you.

We have talked about two programs. You mentioned the indigenous loan guarantee program. Are there other programs I should know about that specifically work on building indigenous ownership and capacity in our electrical grid?

[Debbie Scharf]

There's one program we haven't talked about that I think is quite important, because we're talking about on-grid communities. That's been the conversation to date, but there are actually quite a number of rural and remote communities in this country that don't have access to the grid. They are actually quite energy insecure and pay a disproportionate amount for their energy.

We do have programs that target those rural and remote communities, which by and large are indigenous communities—not exclusively, but by and large. We call it the CERRC program. It's a bit of a mouthful.

This is funding that is provided to those communities that are reliant on fossil fuels. It's to help them find renewable alternatives to be able to supply secure, more affordable and more reliable power to those communities.

It is through a process of self-determination. Those communities have the decision about what avenue they would like to take. Then the CERRC program can come in and help with funding.

We have funded 159 renewable energy and capacity-building projects to date under that program. It's worth just shy of half a billion dollars. It's been running for a number of years and will continue to run.

I certainly have lots of examples I could share around that.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I would appreciate it if you could submit some examples for the committee. I don't have very much time, so if you want to just highlight some of them, that would be great.

[Debbie Scharf]

I have one example of 940 kilowatts. It's the Old Crow solar project in Yukon, the largest commissioned solar project north of the Arctic Circle. It's displacing 200,000 litres of diesel per year, which is likely being put on a boat and brought in.

We have the very small 2.35-megawatt Fort Chipewyan solar project in Alberta, the largest off-grid solar project in Canada. It will displace 650,000 litres of diesel annually. We also have the 350-kilowatt Ah’ta’apq Creek hydro power project in B.C., which is going to reduce the diesel consumption in the community by 80%.

Those are some fairly significant results.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you.

We'll now go to our next speaker, Monsieur Simard, for two and a half minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In your opening remarks, you talked about small modular reactors. I'm going to ask you the million-dollar question, as they say. I put it to an energy expert back home, and I was surprised at the answer, so I want to ask you.

Do you know how many small modular reactors are currently in operation?

[Debbie Scharf]

I don't have the exact number, but they've been present in nuclear submarines for many decades, and that is probably where their genesis was from. The number I would hazard is zero, or very close to zero, and that is probably what you are getting at, right?

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Exactly.

That's what I asked Normand Mousseau, the scientific director of the Trottier Energy Institute. I wanted to get information about small modular reactors. He told me that the number of small modular reactors currently in operation is zero. I am telling you this because, in terms of all the energy modelling, all the new technologies that are being implemented, we need independent scientific committees.

I get the impression that this is sorely lacking at Natural Resources Canada, as it is for many people in the government, since they're quick to make promises around technology that are difficult to implement. I'm thinking of carbon capture and storage strategies.

Like me, you may have seen today that Capital Power, in Edmonton, is going to pull the plug on an investment that was supposed to be worth $2.4 billion because it's too costly.

My question is very simple. Does Natural Resources Canada have a scientific committee capable of analyzing these technologies as well as their potential?

[Debbie Scharf]

I would like to make one comment on SMRs.

While the deployment of small modular reactors is very limited or close to zero in the world, I would like to draw the example of the BWRX-300, which is the grid-scale reactor that is going to be deployed at Darlington.

The “X” in BWRX represents the 10th generation of that technology. Its application in a small format may be new, but the guts of the technology are well established and well known. It is a new format, but it is not necessarily new in all cases, and in all cases it's not necessarily a brand new technology.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Ms. Scharf, but time is up. You'll have another opportunity later.

Mr. Angus, you have two and a half minutes.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you so much.

Could you give us an update on the Atlantic Loop? Is it dead?

[Debbie Scharf]

I will describe it this way. I do not think the Atlantic Loop is dead, because the first phase of the Atlantic Loop is a very live discussion between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for the reliability intertie between the two provinces.

There are active commercial discussions happening at this time. I am hopeful, as a federal representative, that they will conclude those discussions successfully and that the intertie is going to be built in the next five years.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

It's not dead. It's just pining for the fjords.

Part of what was supposed to make the whole connection work was going to be, I think, a 50-year loan from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. I think the feds were going to put up about $4.5 billion.

What I'm hearing now, now that we have Bill C-49 coming through, is that the province is looking to meet its net-zero goal by moving to 1,000 megawatts of onshore wind by 2030, which would give it 50% of the province's capacity. Those would be big projects that would have to get under way. We know the Americans are easily doing it, but this is Canada.

Are the feds talking about loan guarantees to help get these offshore wind projects up and have that as an alternative to the original Atlantic Loop?

[Debbie Scharf]

Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have clean power plans that they have developed as two independent provinces, and they have shared those with the federal government.

You may recall that on October 16 of last year, Minister Wilkinson, Premier Higgs and Premier Houston released a joint statement in which they agreed to work together on a series of priorities, including the reliability intertie, as well as on their clean power plans. I think what you cited with respect to wind was that they're looking to develop quite a number of onshore wind projects, and those are areas on which we are in active discussions with the provinces.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Are you saying that's wind onshore, not wind offshore?

[Debbie Scharf]

I would have to check. That statistic might be for onshore wind.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Okay. The cost of the original project jumped substantially, but there had been the promise of this 50-year loan. I'm just wondering whether or not that could be applied if they wanted to start moving to other renewable sources to meet their targets and to get off coal.

[Debbie Scharf]

For the types of projects we're talking about with the two provinces, they will have access to the investment tax credits and they will have access to Infrastructure Bank financing, and then SREPs will be available if gaps still exist. We believe this suite of tools will be very attractive in helping those projects to get off the ground.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you.

We'll go to our next speaker.

Mr. Falk, you have the floor for five minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Just to follow up on my last question, I just want to correct something. I said 565 megawatts; it's 695 megawatts.

Two months ago, I had a discussion with officials at Manitoba Hydro. They told me that to do what they had done at Keeyask would take 20 years in today's environment, with the regulatory conditions that are there.

Is something like that even doable today, and would it take 20 years?